


Another Brick Falls

by mumuinc



Series: Hummingbird Heartbeats [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-01-27 19:46:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12589236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumuinc/pseuds/mumuinc
Summary: A year into the violent end of Neil and Kevin's friendship in California, Neil Josten gets a call from a familiar coach hoping to recruit him for his Class 1 team.





	1. Prologue

In the pitch darkness of the lonely stretch of highway, the night seemed endless.

 

Kevin Day gripped the steering wheel of his borrowed--no, stolen, car one-handed, gritting his teeth against the growing cramp in his cold, icy fingers and the aching in his wrist. That pain was the least of his worries though, as he glanced anxiously into the yawning expanse of empty road in his rearview mirror. He was eighty odd miles out on the Interstate from Charleston, his foot pressed flat on the gas pedal, but the mid-sized sedan he’d appropriated wasn’t built for the sort of speed his urgency called for, and the ghost of Castle Evermore licked silent and haunting into the purr of the car’s engine as he tried to coax every last bit of horsepower out of the belabored machine that his desperation could bear.

 

Out on the highway in the middle of the night meant he encountered few other vehicles. It wasn’t quite Christmas rush yet and he supposed, in spite of the agonizing pain in his other hand, tucked bleeding and useless against his blood-spattered jersey, that he should be thankful for small miracles, as it meant that he could put as much distance between himself and the shit show he left behind as fast as he dared.

 

He’d been driving an hour in the rank, dry air of the sedan, and logically, he knew he would have to stop some time before his sanity finally gave out, and the car’s gas ran dry. He wasn’t wasting the opportunity of Jean’s rare and precious show of good will in attempting to distract Kevin’s monstrous shadow for even ten minutes of reprieve and two-dollar gas station coffee, though. His hand was still bleeding into his shirt and if he bothered to actually look down at the mangled mess of flesh, he would actually see the white of crushed bone protruding against the pulse of exposed muscle and fresh spurt of blood. Every time he bit his lip to suppress the grimace of pain that occasionally escaped his stoic countenance, he risked reopening the scabbing cut on his mouth, risked dislodging the neat compartmentalization of his half-shattered psyche to keep down the clamoring of his swollen, dislocated jaw, and the sundry of other cuts and bruises he’d endured from the last few raw hours of torture.

 

The fact of the matter was, his whole body hurt, but that pain could never hope to match the unbearable, inescapable fear that this time, the damage was permanent. This time, just as Riko had promised, he would never play again. That, more than any physical pain, threatened to rend apart the last dredges of Kevin Day’s will to live.

 

The call of nature and the beeping of the car’s fuel gauge finally forced him to take refuge in a lonely gas station a hundred and fifty miles out of Charleston. He wasn’t sure whose car it was he’d actually stolen that night; it had seemed like the only viable vehicle he could hotwire one-handed, but he was thankful all the same for the oversized Ravens sweatshirt he found on the back seat, along with a Chemistry book and forty dollars in crisp Hamiltons tucked between the pages. 

 

After peeling out of his bloody jersey and wrapping his damaged hand in it, he ventured into the fluorescent jungle of the attached convenience store to pay for gas and cheap, watered down coffee.

 

The clerk at the counter kept one wary eye on him and another on the Exy match rerun on the tiny CRT TV hanging overhead near the counter. Kevin knew he must look a damn sight like a street thug, with his unkempt hair, his bruised and battered face, and his hand hidden by his bloody jersey, but the clerk only nodded and took his money without comment.

 

Kevin hunched his shoulders and trudged back to the car to nurse his coffee in morose silence as he contemplated what to do. He’d had no plans for his escape beyond walking out of Castle Evermore with whatever was left of his dignity and never looking back.

 

As he stared into the emptiness of the car-less highway before him, he entertained a wistful fantasy of trying to find Nathaniel in the vast expanse of American suburbian wilderness, but had to pragmatically discard the idea as nothing more than wishful thinking of his pain-addled mind. Nathaniel was a ghost, had been a ghost for so long that there was a next to nil chance that he still inhabited the persona of Neil Josten. That would probably have been at least three names and an equivalent number of cities ago. It had been a year since, after all. 

 

But the fantasy that gripped him was harsh and neverending. He wished, for a moment, that he had never made that fateful, disastrous choice that tore the two of them apart.

 

Nathaniel probably hated him now.

 

“Where are you, Neil?” he breathed into the silence, closing his eyes against the overpowering stab of loneliness in his heart that rivaled the unending emptiness that his injured playing hand created in the tightness of his chest. “I need you.”

 

Outside the car, the harsh winter air of West Virginia howled the beginnings of a snow storm that Kevin needed to outrun just as fast as he ran from his demons on Edgar Allan University. Jean had told him that his only viable choice would be in attendance to the NCAA southern district’s winter banquet, hosted by the University of Virginia. It was eleven thirty, but already, it felt like the most interminable midnight of Kevin Day’s life.

 

He set his sights for Charlottesville and hoped his strength and resolve would hold out, even if his sanity would not.


	2. Chapter 2

Neil Josten lit his cigarette and let it burn to the filter without taking a drag. The acrid smell of smoke and the bitter taste of memory felt like a salve to the wound of losing their last and final game of the season as he watched the field floodlights wink out one by one. Tomorrow, the court would be dismantled, the plexiglass walls taken down and astroturf rolled over the hardwood. By Monday, Exy would have been another distant memory as the slow sordid press of time moved on in middle-of-nowhere, Arizona.

 

Neil shifted, crossing his legs and tugging his duffel bag close as he watched the smoke waft from his cigarette and fade into the nothingness of the gathering dusk of the night sky above him. Ash dislodged from the cherry of the stick, flickering slowly onto the drab gray of his once-white sneakers, before disappearing down the gaps of the bleachers beneath his shoes, and he shivered involuntarily at the cool night air of the fading spring. The slight breeze lit his cigarette up brighter in the dimming light coming from the windows of the school’s main building.

 

He heard more than saw the door leading to the locker rooms open and shut, letting Coach Hernandez out into the night air as he strode purposefully into Neil’s space just as he flicked the butt of his cigarette away for the cleaners dismantling the court to deal with.

 

“Josten, you’re still here,” he greeted as Neil stood, shouldering the strap of his bag.

 

Neil shrugged. The game had ended hours ago but he wasn’t keen on the walk back to the ageing foreclosed bungalow he called home. The distinct lack of electricity or running water was a good enough reason not to go, but also that he didn’t want the few people living on the same street to realize someone had broken into and was squatting on the house at the end of the block. Too many trips to and from the place would definitely make people suspicious.

 

Neil wanted as little attention as he possibly could attract from any of the one thousand three hundred fifty nine people officially living in Millport.

 

“We didn’t see your parents at the game today.”

 

Neil stiffened involuntarily at the offhand observation and played it off with another shrug. “They’re busy.”

 

Coach looked at him with speculative dark eyes and nodded. The faculty of Millport High School were used to it by now—Neil Josten had transferred from California the year before and no one, not even the Admissions officers, had ever met his parents. They were always at their respective workplaces in Tucson and Phoenix, and never had enough time to receive their son’s report card or attend any of his games. According to Neil’s previous school records, his parents used to work overseas and Neil had been left in the care of an older brother who had flown off as well once he’d gotten his diploma.

 

None of this even remotely resembled the truth, but it worked well enough for Neil, considering he’d spent a not insignificant chunk of cash making sure all of his stories lined up. Living on the run wasn’t exactly the kind of all-American dream background that got authority figures off his back.

 

“It’s the last game of the season,” Coach said.

 

Neil didn’t say anything and made to leave. It looked like he needed to while away time elsewhere before he could come back to school to sleep in the locker room. Maybe the library was still open…

 

“Josten, wait. There’s someone here to see you.”

 

Neil stopped walking, his blood suddenly running cold as the words washed over him like ice melting down his spine. For someone who’d spent the last seven years trying to outrun his past, the words were a death knell that heralded carrion circling, waiting for him to take his dying breath.

 

Coach Hernandez ushered him into the hallway towards the locker room, and Neil felt the walls closing in as the tall imposing figure of a middle-aged man with angry black tribal tattoos came into view. He tensed at the hollow feeling in his gut as his stomach dropped to his shoes. It didn’t feel like there was entirely enough air in the hallway to push oxygen into his suddenly belabored lungs.

 

“You…!”

 

The man folded his arms across his impressive chest covered in a black wifebeater as Neil’s eyes darted back to the door blocked by Coach Hernandez just as the man locked it.

 

“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten,” the other man said as he held a folder of papers out to Neil. “Everything we’ve agreed on before is still in there.”

 

Neil flicked a scathing glance at the folder, and then at the man’s impassive face. “That contract isn’t legally binding, Coach Wymack.”

 

Coach David Wymack of the Palmetto State Foxes was an impressive looking man if he worked at a rock concert and not as the coach of a Class 1 NCAA team. He returned Neil’s icy stare evenly.

 

“The signature at the dotted line is for a Neil Josten, is it not?”

 

Neil scowled at the man and waved a hand carelessly. “That thing says Kevin and Neil Josten, and I don’t see a Kevin Josten in your line-up, do I?” He snorted. “I’m not interested, Coach. I wasn’t before, and I’m not now.”

 

“Neil!” Coach Hernandez exclaimed, his tan, sun-weathered face consternated by the endless rudeness of his most problematic player.

 

“I’m not playing for the PSU Foxes, Coach,” Neil said with finality and started to shift past Coach Wymack to make for the school’s remaining open exit. 

 

The library was probably out of the question now. In fact, Millport itself was probably out of the question. The name Neil Josten had outlived its usefulness two close calls ago.

 

Neil strode purposefully past Coach Wymack, fingers tightening around the worn strap of his duffel bag when a sharp blow to his stomach sent Neil sprawling backwards onto the linoleum floor. Dimly, he wondered if by any stroke of rotten luck he’d had in the past seven years it meant that his father had finally caught up with him by employing people who’d come into contact with the Neil Josten persona over the two years of his existence.

 

“Damn it, Minyard, this is why we can’t have nice things.”

 

Neil coughed and clutched his stomach as the stranger who’d hit him emerged from the shadows shrouding the corners as a small blond man with a slash of a smile painted on thin pale lips. His hazel eyes danced with malicious delight as he stood over Neil’s curled body as he wielded one of the Millport Dingoes’ backliner racquets.

 

Neil’s eyes fluttered as he gasped in pain. “Doe?!”

 

Andrew Minyard’s manic smile widened as he bent over Neil to peer at his grimacing face. “So glad you still remember, Josten! It’s been a while since Oakland, don’t you think?”

 

Neil shoved a rude gesture at Andrew’s face as he rolled up to his feet, feeling for his ribs for anything broken besides his pride. It didn’t look like Minyard hit him that hard, though the blow was sure to leave a gigantic bruise.

 

“Fuck you,” he wheezed, still clutching his stomach. Wymack and Hernandez rushed to help him up. Neil shrugged off their hands on his arms and shouldered past Minyard roughly. The other man grinned widely as Neil passed him.   
  
“I’m not interested, Coach,” Neil declared as he stalked out of the hallway, clutching at the tatters of his wounded pride at the blow Minyard dealt him.

 

Behind him, he heard Coach Hernandez sputter protests as Minyard laughed unpleasantly. Neil ignored them. He didn’t have to stay here. He could take the night bus to Phoenix and be out of Arizona within the next twelve hours. He could stop in Texas for an ID change and slip through the border completely unnoticed...

“Neil, please. Wait.”

 

Neil stopped in his tracks at the sound of that voice. It frustrated him endlessly that that voice still haunted his dreams and much of his waking moments since he moved to Millport. He’d dreamed about that voice calling to him, looking for him, crying out his name, so many times he sometimes thought he hallucinated even in his waking moments.

 

“Kevin,” he breathed as the tall, pale, muscular frame of Kevin Day slipped out of the shadows, one hand outstretched in a beseeching manner towards Neil.

 

Neil felt his stomach seize and clench as he fought the ridiculous instinct to fly into Kevin’s arms like a cheap TV movie damsel in distress who’d just found her knight in shining armor, and forced himself to stop a safe distance away from Kevin’s reach. His head spun just looking at Kevin’s face, green eyes bright and imploring, as he locked on Neil’s gaze. He felt suddenly dizzy and lightheaded; there was definitely not enough air in the hallway for the five of them standing there, even though that same hallway had been packed with dozens of students just hours earlier. His knees felt weak and his skin was cold and clammy as darkness licked the edges of his vision.

 

“Neil!” Kevin exclaimed as Neil swayed on his feet, suddenly unsteady, as he struggled to gulp in oxygen, staggering, and Kevin quickly caught him, glancing askance at Coach Hernandez. “Coach, is there anywhere we can talk privately?”

 

Coach Hernandez ushered the two of them into the broom closet-sized room he used as an office and made room to let Wymack and Minyard in, but Kevin held a hand up even as he steered Neil to sit down and closed the door behind him.

 

Neil focused on sucking air into his system, even as he swatted Kevin’s hand away. “I don’t need your help.” He shot Kevin a dirty look.

 

Kevin ignored him and leaned closer, one hand coming up to cup Neil’s chin, tilting his face up as if to inspect the twin fading white lines on his cheek, and then the little nicks of scars dancing around his throat. Neil wanted to bat his hand away again when he noticed it: there on Kevin’s left hand were lines of scars just beginning to fade, jagged and red and angry, lines that had not been there a year ago, when the two of them parted ways. They weren’t like the cuts on Neil’s face and neck, which were clean and shallow and in the right light, almost invisible. These looked like something unfathomably tragic had happened to his hand and whoever had attempted to patch him up couldn’t quite get it right.

 

Neil grabbed Kevin’s hand and wrenched it away from his face. “What happened to this?” he couldn’t help asking.

 

He knew very well what it was he wanted to know. Kevin had been in the news a few months back, following a skiing accident that had left his hand injured—his playing hand. He’d taken a leave of absence from the Ravens since the winter in order to recuperate. Neil wasn’t sure what Kevin was doing with the Foxes now, and he figured maybe Kevin had finally grown a spine and told Wymack about his parentage, and the man was taking care of his son while he recovered.

 

“You’ve seen the news,” Kevin said. “That’s not important.”

 

“What are you doing here?” Neil demanded, suddenly suspicious, even as Kevin reached to touch his face again. Neil flinched and Kevin dropped his hand.

 

He stood where he’d been leaning against Coach’s messy desk and gave Neil a piercing look. “I came to get you back.”

 

Neil couldn’t help himself and he laughed, an ugly derisive sound that seemed to rip out of his suddenly dry throat, straight from the depths of his black soul. The weight of Kevin’s betrayal hung heavy in the pregnant air. “‘Get me back’? What the fuck do you take me for? Your ex-girlfriend?”

 

“Neil, last year—”

 

“Last year was a fucking mistake. The biggest of my sorry-ass life, it would seem.” He scowled. “Fuck you, Kevin. I don’t need your fucking charity. I’ve been doing this for the last seven years. I don’t need your fucking pity to get myself out of this place.”

 

Kevin’s face was full of regret. “Neil, he was going to kill you if I didn’t leave with him. Riko doesn’t mess around when he says he will.”

 

Neil stared at him belligerently. “Nobody asked you to sacrifice yourself, asshole.”

 

“I didn’t—” Kevin stopped, wiped his face with his unmarked hand, swallowing. His damaged hand grabbed Neil’s, green eyes full of desperation. “I know, Neil. I know. But just… please. We wanted this before, you and I. Why does it have to be different now? Wymack is offering the same deal.” He sighed. “Please, Neil. I need you.”

 

Neil stared at the snaking, jagged lines of scarring on Kevin’s hand. He had no idea how Kevin had winded up on Wymack’s team instead of the Ravens, and he didn’t care. He’d told himself a hundred times in the past year, imagined himself saying it to Kevin’s face. He could almost taste the words in the back of his throat, as foul and unpleasant as the taste of Kevin leaving. 

 

But that insidious part of him that couldn’t, that wouldn’t, live without Exy, that would throw his life away for it and for the man standing before him wouldn’t shut up in his head. Was it really so bad to be playing on the same team as Kevin? Wouldn’t a five-year contract with a Class 1 Exy team really be nothing more than the same five years Kevin had spent on the run with Neil and Mary? Neil had been nothing and no one for so long that the very idea of being something, being someone, even if that someone was a fabrication of false documents bought with blood money, filled him with unbearable hunger to be more. It had always been something Kevin promised he would be.

 

...Kevin who left him to go back to Castle Evermore…

 

He yanked his wrist away from Kevin’s grasp. “What really are you doing here with the Foxes and not the Ravens, Kevin? And where’s Riko?”

 

Kevin swallowed as if his next words were too horrible to contemplate. “Hell if I know. I haven’t seen him since—” He cut himself off and shook out his hand, as if the very act of moving had hurt and scowled down at Neil, drawing to his full height, as if to emphasize a power Neil had convinced himself he no longer had over him. Kevin had done this so many times when they were young. “So are you in or are you out?”

 

Neil scowled back, the severity of his black dyed eyebrows and flat brown eyes lending him a ferocity he hadn’t possessed before where Kevin was concerned. Until now.

 

“Fine.”

 

Kevin only nodded once. “Good.”

 

And then he was gone.

 

Neil tried to think about the fact that he was going to continue on as Neil Josten. He tried to think about the fact that he would be able to continue playing Exy, Kevin’s presence on the team be damned, if not for the entire duration of the contract, then at least a small portion of it until he inevitably needed to become someone else. However short it would be, that small piece of heaven would be his to enjoy and cherish until his current alibi finally ran aground with his father’s men. He tried to be exultant, but all he could taste in his mouth was ashes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am still not happy with this. Many parts of this chapter were lifted directly from the first chapter of the Foxhole Court, and that was probably the only thing that made this exposition chapter marginally interesting, because I still find it crappy, but I can't be arsed to rewrite the whole damn thing again. God knows I've already rewritten this four times.
> 
> PS. because I've taken so long between chapters, I don't proofread anymore. Ugh. I'm sorry for all the typos but I just wanted to be totally done with this chapter so I can move on to more interesting things that I want to happen in this story. Just rereading it to type out from my handwritten draft makes me cringe.
> 
> Come yell at me over this fic on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/mumuinc)


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